Instant Conversion Killer

Is your cart rejecting the user's billing address?

[buckworks]

Bucky's shopping misadventures ...

This evening I was all set to purchase multiple items from A Very Fashionable Company, but the shopping cart wouldn't accept my billing address because it was a PO Box.

The error message said:

"You must enter a valid address. Note, we do not ship to APO, FPO, or PO boxes."

That's fine for the SHIPPING address, but I'm trying to enter my BILLING address!

Yeesh. What a clueless roadblock!

I went to their competitor instead.

[creeking]

for some purposes, the USPS will let people use the street address of the post office (where the po box is located).

[ribbs.usps.gov...]


iirc, some official document needs to be signed

[not2easy]

Been through that myself. The problem with using the Post Office's street address is that it can throw a mismatch flag as a billing address. They have allowed me to use their street address and I've done that frequently, but it will never pass as my billing address.

[lucy24]

for some purposes, the USPS will let

I don't think this detail will do our Buckworks much good ;)

[buckworks]

No, it wouldn't help, although I could see it being useful in some situations.

What would help would be for the webmaster(s) of that site to get a clue and fix the cart so it's not applying constraints to the billing address that only matter for the shipping address.

The point of my rant is to alert webmasters who read this to double-check that their carts aren't pulling the same stunt.

I shudder to think how much that bug is costing in lost sales and customer alienation.

[dpd1]

Send them an email... They may not even know. I've stumbled across mistakes on my sites, that were there for years... and not even people who know me bothered to say anything.

[lucy24]

double-check that their carts aren't pulling the same stunt

If the ecommerce subforum doesn't already have a list of Top Ten Fatal Errors, it should. Consider also the ones that keep coming up about places that claim they can ship to multiple countries ... but when it comes time to enter a zip/postal code, nothing but \d{5} is accepted. I'll bet there are also sites that insist on a state/province even if you live in a country that doesn't use them in postal addresses.

[piatkow]

I'll bet there are also sites that insist on a state/province even if you live in a country that doesn't use them in postal addresses.

Plenty of UK sites still insist on the county name being entered.